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Indonesia chief accuses foreign-backed NGOs of fueling division

Al Mayadeen | June 2, 2025

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto used his Pancasila Day address to issue a stark warning about the threat of foreign interference, specifically accusing foreign-funded NGOs of acting as vehicles for division and soft-power manipulation. His remarks echoed growing global concerns over the use of civil society organizations to exert influence on domestic politics, often under the banner of democratic reform.

“They [foreign countries] are still provoking us. They are funding NGOs to fuel division … I am not telling Indonesians not to trust other countries, but we must not let ourselves be manipulated. We remember what our founding fathers said: the Indonesian people must stand on their own feet,” Prabowo declared.

The president’s warning comes amid heightened scrutiny of several Indonesian NGOs and media outlets accused of pushing foreign-aligned narratives. Although no specific organizations were named, the administration’s message aligns with broader concerns seen in other parts of the world, where governments have taken steps to curb foreign-funded groups involved in political advocacy.

Sovereignty Shield

Analysts draw parallels between Prabowo’s remarks and cases in countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, where “color revolutions”, protest movements aimed at changing the leadership, were supported by NGOs funded by Western entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID.

While often portrayed as democratic uprisings, these movements have been criticized by several governments as externally orchestrated attempts to reshape sovereign policy from the outside.

Responding to such concerns, countries like Russia have enacted “foreign agent” laws requiring NGOs receiving overseas funding and engaging in political work to register as foreign agents. Kyrgyzstan and Hungary have also adopted similar restrictions.

Prabowo’s rhetoric now places Indonesia within this rising global tide of states seeking to insulate their domestic affairs from covert foreign pressure.

Ideological Resilience

Drawing from Indonesia’s own experience of colonization, Prabowo said that foreign destabilization efforts have not vanished; they have simply evolved into more discreet forms, such as ideological funding and narrative engineering.

“Disagreements should not become a reason for conflict. This is what foreign countries hope for,” he warned, calling for social cohesion in the face of such influence.

The speech served not only as a condemnation of foreign interference but also as a reaffirmation of Pancasila, Indonesia’s state philosophy born in the wake of independence from Dutch rule in 1945.

Composed of five pillars, belief in one God, civilized humanity, national unity, wisdom-led democracy, and social justice, Pancasila remains a unifying framework in a diverse and populous archipelago.

National Fortification

Prabowo noted that these principles must serve as a shield against modern threats to sovereignty. He called on Indonesians to deepen their commitment to national unity and self-reliance, framing these values as essential defenses against foreign agendas that seek to exploit social fractures.

While the speech drew support from nationalist sectors, some observers cautioned against the potential suppression of independent civil society voices.

Nonetheless, many view the move as a calculated effort to consolidate national cohesion and ensure that policymaking remains firmly in the hands of Indonesians.

June 2, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Another Neoconservative Bites the Dust: The Life and Legacy of Michael Ledeen

By Jose Alberto Nino – The Occidental Observer – June 1, 2025

Michael Ledeen, the man who urged America to “to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall” every decade, met an end that many of his critics would call overdue. On May 17, 2025, Ledeen died at the age of 83. marking the passing of one of the last influential Jewish neoconservatives of his generation.

Ledeen obtained a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied under the Jewish German-born historian George Mosse. He took a particular interest in Italian fascism and wrote a doctoral dissertation that eventually became “Universal Fascism: The Theory and Practice of the Fascist International, 1928–1936,” published in 1972, which explored Benito Mussolini’s efforts to create a Fascist international in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

His academic career began at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was an assistant professor of history from 1967–1973, before becoming a visiting professor at the University of Rome from 1973–1977. Ledeen authored over 35 books throughout his career, including works on fascism, European history, and Middle Eastern politics.

His influence was most felt in the realm of national security though. Throughout his career, Ledeen held multiple advisory roles within the U.S. government, including as a consultant to the National Security Council, a special advisor to the Secretary of State, a consultant to the Department of Defense, and a consultant to the under-secretary of political affairs. Ledeen was an active member of numerous think tanks and regime-change advocacy organizations such as the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI), American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Additionally, he has been published in numerous philosemitic conservative outlets such as the National Review, Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard. His influence extended beyond formal roles. According to the Washington Post, he was the only “full-time” international affairs analyst frequently consulted by Karl Rove, the chief strategist of then-President George W. Bush.

Ledeen’s career was not free of controversy, however. In 1980, Ledeen co-authored articles with Belgian-American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave in The New Republic alleging Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy Carter, accepted payments from Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi and met with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. He made those same assertions before a Senate subcommittee as the 1980 presidential election quickly approached. These claims, published weeks before the presidential election, reignited the “Billygate” scandal.

A 1985 Wall Street Journal investigation later confirmed that the stories were part of a disinformation campaign executed by Italy’s military intelligence agency (SISMI) to hurt Carter’s presidential re-election campaign. Italian intelligence officer Francesco Pazienza testified that Ledeen received $120,000 for his role and operated under the codename “Z-3.” Pazienza, who was convicted for extortion in connection to the operation, described Ledeen as a key figure behind the dissemination of false narratives.

Additionally, Ledeen was heavily involved in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration. As a consultant to National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Ledeen facilitated back-channel communications between U.S. officials, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. In this case, the Reagan administration was clandestinely negotiating hostage releases in Lebanon via arms sales to Iran, a scheme that bypassed Congressional oversight and later became a major scandal. Ledeen defended Ghorbanifar despite widespread skepticism about his reliability, subsequently detailing his perspective in the book “Perilous Statecraft.” While he never faced criminal charges, Ledeen’s role in Iran-Contra showcased his willingness to operate in the shadows, ethics be damned.

Like many Jews in the neoconservative movement, Ledeen has a long career of advocating for regime change in the Middle East.

Ledeen was one of the most vocal Jewish neoconservatives lobbying for the removal of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Along with other neoconservative luminaries such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, Ledeen signed “An Open Letter to the President” in 1998, urging Bill Clinton to topple Iraq’s Baathist regime.

Similar to other Jewish officials in the national security establishment, Ledeen was an unapologetic champion of using hard military power. Jewish neoconservative journalist Jonah Goldberg coined the “Leeden Doctrine” after reflecting on a speech he attended in the 1990s at the American Enterprise Institute. In that speech, Ledeen was alleged to have said:

Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Ledeen was one of the most energetic proponents of using military force against the country. Ledeen wrote a piece at the National Review critical of former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who advised against invading Iraq. Instead of exercising restraint, Ledeen called for turning the entire Middle East “into a cauldron”, as he explained in more detail:

Scowcroft has managed to get one thing half right, even though he misdescribes it. He fears that if we attack Iraq “I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror.”

One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists.

Ledeen’s hawkish stance on Iran was also a lifelong constant. He labeled the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini a “theocratic fascist”, and as Jewish political commentator Peter Beinart observed about Ledeen’s Middle Eastern political analysis, every problem in the region “traces back to Tehran.” Despite opposing a direct invasion of Iran in his later years, Ledeen championed aggressive support for Iranian dissidents and preemptive strikes against nuclear facilities if diplomacy failed to get Iran to kowtow to the United States.

Michael Ledeen’s death marks the end of a career that Jewish journalist Eli Lake described as one of “America’s most courageous historians and journalists.” His friend David Goldman, a Jewish international relations commentator associated with the Claremont Institute, wrote that Ledeen’s “personal contribution to America’s victory in the Cold War is far greater than the public record shows.”

Ledeen’s legacy is undeniably one of steadfast advocacy for Jewish interests within the American conservative movement. For those who saw his influence as a barrier to a more authentically gentile Right, his passing, like David Horowitz’s, may indeed be viewed as an opportunity for change as more of the Jewish founders of neoconservatism and their progeny exit the plane of the living.

For this author, Ledeen will certainly not be missed.

June 1, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire

Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj

By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025

In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.

But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.

China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.

So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? The answer may lie in the unspoken rules of soft power: Ivy League campuses are battlegrounds for influence. The US deep state has long recruited foreign students to promote its interests abroad – subsidized by American taxpayers no less. China is apparently playing the same game, leveraging elite US universities to co-opt future leaders on its side of the geostrategic fence.

For the time being, a judge has granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order against Trump’s proposed ban. Come what may, there is one commonsense solution that all parties to this saga would like to avoid: Forcing Ivy League institutions to open their admissions process to public scrutiny. The same institutions that champion open borders, open societies, and open everything will, however, not tolerate any suggestion of greater openness to its admissions process. That would open up a Pandora’s Box of global corruption that is systemically ruining nations today.

Speaking of corruption – how is this for irony? A star Harvard professor who built her career researching decision-making and dishonesty was just fired and stripped of tenure for fabricating her own data!

Concentration of wealth and alumni networks

The Ivy League has a vested interest in perpetuating rising wealth and educational inequalities. It is the only way they can remain atop the global rankings list at the expense of less-endowed peers.

Elite universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT dominate lists of institutions with the most ultra-wealthy alumni (net worth over $30mn). For example, Harvard alone has 18,000 ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) alumni, representing 4% of the global UHNW population.

These alumni networks provide major donations, corporate partnerships, and exclusive opportunities, reinforcing institutional wealth. If the alma mater’s admissions process was rigged in their favor, they have no choice but to cough it up, at least for the sake of their offspring who will perpetuate this exclusivist cycle.

The total endowment of Princeton University – $34.1 billion in 2024 – translated to $3.71 million per student, enabling generous financial aid and state-of-the-art facilities. Less prestigious institutions just cannot compete on this scale.

Rankings, graft, and ominous trends

Global university rankings (QS, THE, etc.) heavily favor institutions with large endowments, high spending per student, and wealthy student bodies. For example, 70% of the top 50 US News & World Report Best Colleges overlap with universities boasting the largest endowments and the highest percentage of students from the top 1% of wealthy families.

According to the Social Mobility Index (SMI), climbing rankings requires tens of millions in annual spending, driving tuition hikes and exacerbating inequality. Lower-ranked schools which prioritize affordability and access are often overshadowed in traditional rankings, which reward wealth over social impact. Besides, social mobility these days is predetermined at birth, as the global wealth divide becomes unbridgeable.

Worse, the global ranking system itself thrives on graft, with institutions gaming audits, inflating data, and even bribing reviewers. Take the case of a Southeast Asian diploma mill where some of its initial batch of female students had been arrested for prostitution. Despite its flagrant lack of academic integrity, it grew rapidly to secure an unusually high QS global ranking – ahead of venerable institutions like the University of Pavia, where Leonardo da Vinci studied, and which boasts three Nobel Laureates among its ranks.

Does this grotesque inversion of merit make any sense?

Government policies increasingly favor elite institutions. Recent White House tax cuts and deregulation may further widen gaps by benefiting corporate-aligned universities while reducing public funding for others. This move was generally welcomed by the Ivy League until Trump took on Harvard.

With such ominous trends on the horizon, brace yourselves for an implosion of the global education sector by 2030 – a reckoning mirroring the 2008 financial crisis, but with far graver consequences. And touching on the 2008 crisis, didn’t someone remark that “behind every financial disaster, there’s a Harvard economist?”

Nobody seems to be learning from previous contretemps. In fact, I dare say that ‘learning’ is merely a coincidental output of the Ivy League brand

The credentialism trap

When Lehman Brothers and its lesser peers collapsed in 2008, many Singapore-based corporations eagerly scooped up their laid-off executives. The logic? Fail upward.

If these whizz kids were truly talented, why did they miss the glaring warning signs during the lead up to the greatest economic meltdown since the Great Depression? The answer lies in the cult of credentialism and an entrenched patronage system. Ivy League MBAs and Rolodexes of central banker contacts are all that matters. The consequences are simply disastrous: A runaway global talent shortage will hit $8.452 trillion in unrealized annual revenues by 2030, more than the projected GDP of India for the same year.

Ivy League MBAs often justify their relevance by overcomplicating simple objectives into tedious bureaucratic grinds – all in the name of efficiency, smart systems, and ever-evolving ‘best practices’. The result? Doctors now spend more time on paperwork than treating patients, while teachers are buried under layers of administrative work.

Ultimately, Ivy League technocrats often function as a vast bureaucratic parasite, siphoning public and private wealth into elite hands. What kind of universal socioeconomic model are these institutions bequeathing to the world? I can only think of one historical analogue as a future cue: Colonial India, aka the British Raj. This may be a stretch, but bear with me.

Lessons from the Raj

As Norman Davies pointed out, the Austro-Hungarians had more bureaucrats managing Prague than the British needed to run all of colonial India – a subcontinent that included modern-day Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, it took only 1,500-odd white Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials to govern colonial India until WWI.

That is quite staggering to comprehend, unless one grasps how the British and Indian societies are organized along rigid class (and caste) lines. When two corrupt feudal systems mate, their offspring becomes a blueprint for dystopia.

India never recovered from this neo-feudal arrangement. If the reader thinks I am exaggerating, let’s compare the conditions in the British Raj and China from 1850 to 1976 (when the Cultural Revolution officially ended). During this period, China endured numerous societal setbacks – including rebellions, famines, epidemics, lawlessness, and a world war – which collectively resulted in the deaths of nearly 150 million Chinese. The Taiping Rebellion alone – the most destructive civil war in history – resulted in 20 to 30 million dead, representing 5-10% of China’s population at the time.

A broad comparison with India during the same period reveals a death toll of 50-70 million, mainly from epidemics and famines. Furthermore, unlike colonial India, many parts of China also lacked central governance.

Indian nationalists are quick to blame a variety of bogeymen for their society’s lingering failings. Nevertheless, they should ask themselves why US Big Tech-owned news platforms, led by upper-caste Hindu CEOs, no less, showed a decidedly pro-Islamabad bias during the recent Indo-Pakistani military standoff. Maybe, these CEOs are supine apparatchiks, much like their predecessors during the British Raj? Have they been good stewards of the public domain (i.e. internet)? Have they promoted meritocracy in foreign lands? (You can read some stark examples here, here and here).

These Indian Big Tech bros, however, showed a lot of vigor and initiative during the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing their employees to take the vaccine or face the pink slip. They led the charge behind the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response, which included an “unprecedented corporate sector initiative to help India successfully fight COVID-19.” Just check out the credentials of the ‘experts’ involved here. Shouldn’t this task be left to accomplished Indian virologists and medical experts?

A tiny few, in the service of a hegemon, can control the fate of billions. India’s income inequality is now worse than it was under British rule.

A way out?

As global university inequalities widen further, it is perhaps time to rethink novel approaches to level the education field as many brick and mortar institutions may simply fold during the volatile 2025-30 period.

I am optimistic that the use of AI in education will be a great equalizer, but I also fear that Big Tech will force governments into using its proprietary EdTech solutions that are already showing signs of runaway AI hallucinations – simply because the bold new world is all about control and power, not empowerment. Much like the British Raj, I would say.

Dr. Mathew Maavak researches systems science, global risks, geopolitics, strategic foresight, governance and Artificial Intelligence.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Report: Biden May Not Have Even Known About Detrimental Climate Policies of his Own Administration

Power The Future | May 28, 2025

While the Biden administration was quick to tout and implement its aggressive climate agenda, a closer look raises a more troubling question: did President Joe Biden ever even know about some of the sweeping actions taken in his name?

We reviewed eight major executive actions that fundamentally reshaped American energy policy, from banning offshore drilling to invoking emergency powers to boost solar manufacturing, and found no evidence that President Biden ever personally spoke about any of them. Not in a press conference. Not in a speech. Not even a video statement.

These aren’t minor procedural documents, memos, or messaging documents. They include:

  • Clean AI Data Centers EO (Jan. 14, 2025): Gave the Departments of Defense and Energy the green light to lease public land for AI data centers, provided they’re powered by “clean energy,” of course.
  • Offshore Drilling Ban (Jan. 6 2025): Pulled over 625 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf out of future oil and gas leasing. Biden never mentioned it on camera.
  • EO 14143 (Jan. 16 2025): A last-days-of-the-administration decree making AmeriCorps alumni eligible for preferential federal hiring, potentially reshaping the makeup of the federal workforce without public debate and allowing eco-left to insert themselves in the administration.
  • Arctic Drilling Ban (March 13, 2023): Prohibited oil and gas leasing in sensitive areas of the Arctic. Notably timed just after approval of the Willow Project, this was a political fig leaf, not a presidential priority.
  • Defense Production Act Invocation (June 6, 2022): Used Cold War-era emergency powers to push solar panels and heat pumps without a peep from Biden himself.
  • EO 14027 (May 7, 2021): Created a “Climate Change Support Office” buried in bureaucracy, giving climate staffers yet another taxpayer-funded silo of influence.
  • EO 14030 (May 20, 2021): Ordered all federal agencies to assess “climate-related financial risk,” laying the groundwork for ESG-style investing mandates across the government.
  • EO 14057 (Dec. 8, 2021): Committed the entire federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050 and required 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030—one of the most expansive decarbonization orders in history.

After uncovering this slew of major executive actions reshaping America’s energy landscape that were never publicly addressed by President Biden, Power The Future Executive Director stated: “Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans. The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

Despite their massive consequences for American energy producers, workers, and consumers, President Biden made no public comment, on camera or to press, about any of these actions.

This lack of public acknowledgment begs the question of whether these orders were auto-penned by eco-left policy by ghostwriters?

Americans deserve to know whether their president is making energy policy or whether it’s being run by anonymous staffers in federal agencies and activist NGOs behind closed doors.

When executive power is used to shut down energy production, rewire the economy, and restructure the federal workforce, the American people should at least expect their elected leader to own it.

Instead, we’re left with a pile of signed orders and zero accountability. Power The Future will continue investigating the true origins of these impactful policies.

May 29, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Washington’s “Golden Dome” – Multi-Trillion Tax Dollar Heist at Best, Dangerous Provocation at Worst

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – May 25, 2025

US President Donald Trump has announced his administration has chosen the architecture for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, claiming it will cost $175 billion and be operational in “less than three years” with a “success rate close to 100%.”

During President Trump’s announcement on May 21, 2025, it was claimed the Golden Dome will consist of technology deployed across land, sea, and space capable of intercepting hypersonic, ballistic, and advanced cruise missiles, “even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.” 

Former-US President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program (also known as the Strategic Defense Initiative) was repeatedly cited during the announcement. That program sought to use space-based weapons to void the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” allowing the US to conduct a nuclear or non-nuclear first strike on another nation and avoid what had otherwise been an inevitable nuclear retaliation that would destroy both nations in the process.

Specifically, because mutually assured destruction was seen as a better deterrence against a first strike by one nuclear-armed nation against another, along with concerns over costs, technological limitations, and then-existing arms control treaties like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the initiative was never fully realized.

Granting the US Impunity to Attack, Not “Defend” Itself

US Space Force General Michael Guetlein, picked to lead the Golden Dome project and present during its announcement, would claim:

As you’re aware, our adversaries have become very capable and very intent on holding the homeland at risk. While we have been focused on keeping the peace overseas, our adversaries have been quickly modernizing their nuclear forces, building out ballistic missiles capable of hosting multiple warheads, building out hypersonic missiles capable of attacking the United States within an hour and traveling at 6,000 mph, building cruise missiles that can navigate around our radar and our defenses and building submarines that can sneak up on our shores and worse yet, building space weapons. It is time that we change that equation and start doubling down on the protection of the homeland.

Yet what General Guetlein calls “keeping the peace overseas,” is in reality the United States encroaching along the borders and shores of nations like Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea.

This includes the stationing of not only missile defense systems like Patriot, THAAD, and the Aegis Ashore system in close proximity to these nations in violation of the ABM treaty the US has since abandoned, but also first-strike offensive weapons like the Typhon missile launcher capable of firing both Standard SM-6 anti-air missiles, but also ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles previously prohibited under the INF treaty the US has also since abandoned.

For example, the US has positioned THAAD systems in both the Middle East and Asia, and its Typhon missile system is currently stationed in the Philippines with additional units on the way, specifically aimed at China.

Beyond the global-spanning military footprint of the United States, Washington is also preparing for or already directing multiple proxy wars against these nations.

The conflict in Ukraine was entirely engineered by the United States, beginning with Kiev’s political capture in 2014, the training and arming of Ukraine’s military, and the capture, reorganization, and direction of Ukraine’s intelligence agencies by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The US has been waging war and proxy war against Iran for decades, including invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq right on its borders, invading and overthrowing the government of Iran’s ally Syria, the waging of war on Yemen-based Ansar Allah – also an Iranian ally. The US also maintains constant financial, political, and military support for Israel, which has repeatedly attacked Iran and its allies.

And despite officially recognizing Taiwan as part of “One China,” the United States has continued supporting separatist political parties administering Taipei, is arming local military forces, and is even stationing US troops on the island province itself.

All of this has forced Russia, Iran, China, and other nations to respond by bolstering military spending, increasing research and development into missile technology, and the creation of credible deterrents against decades-spanning US aggression and proxy war along and even within their borders.

While the Trump administration depicts the Golden Dome as necessary to “forever end the missile threat to the American homeland,” it is instead being built to enable the US to forever threaten other nations around the globe with its missiles.

Dubious Claims About Golden Dome’s “Near 100%” Success 

At one point during the Golden Dome’s announcement, US President Trump would claim:

I will tell you an adversary told me, a very big adversary, told me the most brilliant people in the world are in Silicon Valley. He said, “we cannot duplicate them. We can’t.”

He also claimed:

We have things that nobody else can have. You see what we’ve done helping Israel. You probably wouldn’t have in Israel. They launched probably 500 missiles all together and I think one half of a missile got through and that was only falling to the ground as scrap metal.

Except none of this is true.

If President Trump is referring to the 2024 Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel, up to 200 missiles were fired, with dozens if not scores of them circumventing Israeli missile defenses and striking targets, including dozens striking and damaging Israel’s Nevatim Airbase alone, according to NPR.

No air or missile defense system has a “success rate close to 100%.” 

While any particular system may have a “success rate close to 100%” intercepting individual targets, retaliatory strikes are planned specifically to include a large enough number of missiles, drones, and other projectiles to saturate a defense system’s ability to intercept them all during a single attack. This means that while many incoming targets will be intercepted, many others will not, and critical targets will inevitably be struck and destroyed.

Regarding the state of US missile defense technology, unless President Trump is referring to undisclosed innovations, nothing the US currently is known to possess in terms of air and missile defense systems consists of “things that nobody else can have.”

And while in the past Silicon Valley drove unparalleled advances in technology contributing to a decisive military advantage for the US, the gap has since drastically closed and in some instances is widening in favor of nations like Russia and China.

The conflict in Ukraine, for example, has demonstrated glaring Russian advantages in several key areas that void the entire premise the Golden Dome is predicated on. Russia has demonstrated that it is capable of producing both larger quantities of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as layered integrated air defense systems and at a fraction of the cost the US and its European partners spend on arms and ammunition production.

Russia’s advantage is so great, it prompted the first-ever US National Defense Industrial Strategy in 2022.

The paper admitted the US (and the rest of the collective West) suffers from a bloated, inefficient military industrial base incapable of meeting the demands of the type of large-scale, high-intensity, protracted warfare taking place in Ukraine and likely to take place in future conflicts with either Russia or China.

As previously reported, the paper lays out a multitude of problems plaguing the US military industrial base including a lack of surge capacity, an inadequate workforce, overdependence on offshore downstream suppliers, as well as insufficient “demand signals” to motivate private industry partners to produce what’s needed, in the quantities needed, when it is needed.

In fact, the majority of the problems identified by the report involved private industry and its unwillingness to meet national security requirements because they were not profitable.

Nations like Russia and China do not rely on private industry partners for national defense programs. Much of the industrial power researching, developing, and mass-producing arms and ammunition in these countries takes place within state-owned enterprises. Because national defense is the chief priority of these enterprises, money is invested whether it is profitable or not.

This is what allows Russian and Chinese industry to maintain huge workforces, facilities, and tooling even when production is reduced, while private industry in the West would slash all three to maximize profitability. The first model allows a nation to surge the production of arms and ammunition on short notice – the other requires strong enough “demand signals” to justify the time-consuming process of building up the levels of all three – a process that can take years.

None of the problems described regarding the US military industrial base have been addressed since the National Defense Industrial Strategy was published in 2022. Corporations like Lockheed, Raytheon, L3Harris, and newer companies like Anduril slated to play a role in the proposed Golden Dome system continue to pursue a strictly for-profit model that will create the same disparity in quantity and quality seen playing out on and over the battlefield in Ukraine.

This leaves the likelihood the Golden Dome – like all other modern US military programs – will fall far short of stated expectations because of the fraud, waste, and abuse that defines US military industrial production.

The ultimate irony is that while the Golden Dome is sold to the public as “protecting” America, vast sums of public money that could actually improve the lives of Americans at home through infrastructure, education, and healthcare, will instead be siphoned off by demonstrably incompetent and corrupt arms manufacturers, all in an attempt to enhance Washington’s ability to menace the rest of the world with greater impunity – not protect the US at home.

The rest of the world will predictably react to the Golden Dome by creating their own means to defend themselves and retaliate against the US if attacked, making Americans not only less safe, but in the process of building the Golden Dome, less prosperous.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

May 25, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Did the US Military Withdraw from Afghanistan because of Fentanyl?

Tales of the American Empire | May 22, 2025

It remains unclear why the US military suddenly fled Afghanistan in 2021, leaving behind billions of dollars of equipment. It was clear a decade before that the American occupation was unnecessary and failed to tame the Afghan tribes. By 2021, the US military was needed elsewhere as the war in Ukraine was about to explode while African nations rebelled against their covert French colonial lords. Yet there is hard evidence they left after profits from the secret American opium trade in Afghanistan crashed after Fentanyl became the preferred drug for abusers.

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Related Tale: “Protecting the American Opium Trade”;    • Protecting the American Opium Trade  

Related Tale: “Football Star Murdered in Afghanistan”;    • Football Star Murdered in Afghanistan  

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May 22, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

EU hands US state media outlet €5.5 million lifeline

RT | May 22, 2025

The European Union has pledged €5.5 million in emergency funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to prop up the Cold War-era broadcaster, which is widely regarded as a Western propaganda outlet.

Originally created in the 1950s and covertly financed by the CIA to disseminate pro-Western narratives into the Soviet bloc, RFE/RL has more recently operated under the oversight of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order eliminating most of the agency’s funding as part of a sweeping cost-cutting agenda.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the bloc’s financial lifeline on Tuesday, describing it as “short-term emergency funding” to support what she called a “vital” mission. The €5.5 million package will act as a “safety net” to help RFE/RL maintain operations in countries within Brussels’s sphere of interest, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, and several Central Asian states.

“In a time of growing unfiltered content, independent journalism is more important than ever,” Kallas said following a meeting of EU foreign ministers. She acknowledged that Brusssels could not fully replace the lost American funding but emphasized the symbolic value of the move, urging individual member states to offer further support.

Since Trump’s defunding order, RFE/RL has furloughed staff, suspended programming, and launched legal challenges. Although a Washington judge temporarily halted the administration’s decision in April, a federal appeals court later blocked the release of funds pending further litigation. The broadcaster has warned that it faces permanent shutdown in multiple regions if its financial crisis is not resolved.

The Trump administration framed the defunding as part of a broader campaign to dismantle bureaucratic institutions that no longer align with US strategic interests. RFE/RL’s leadership has disputed that rationale, with its president, Stephen Capus, calling the funding cuts a “massive gift to America’s enemies.”

Administration officials and critics have argued that RFE/RL and its sister outlet, Voice of America (VOA), have lost their relevance and veered toward partisan editorializing. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has publicly called for both outlets to be “shut down,” writing on X: “Nobody listens to them anymore.”

May 22, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Telegram’s Durov names French official he accused of censorship request

RT | May 19, 2025

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has claimed that French foreign intelligence chief Nicolas Lerner personally asked him to censor conservatives on his platform ahead of the contentious rerun of Romania’s presidential elections. The Russian-born entrepreneur said he refused the request.

The accusations of foreign meddling first surfaced last year after Romania’s top court annulled the November election results, in which independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu came first with 23%. Authorities cited “irregularities” in his campaign, along with intelligence reports alleging Russian interference – claims Moscow has denied. Georgescu was later barred from running again.

On Sunday, pro-EU centrist Nicusor Dan was elected president of Romania. His conservative, Eurosceptic opponent George Simion accused France and Moldova of attempting to sabotage his campaign.

In a post on X on Sunday evening, Durov said he met with Lerner, head of France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), in Paris. The agency, operating under the Ministry of the Armed Forces, is tasked with gathering intelligence and combating terrorist threats.

“This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hotel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused,” Durov wrote. “We didn’t block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won’t start doing it in Europe,” he added.

Durov had previously hinted that France asked him to “silence” Romanian conservatives. The French Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations of election meddling as “completely unfounded.”

“France categorically rejects these allegations and calls on everyone to exercise responsibility and respect for Romanian democracy,” the ministry stated, labeling the accusations “a diversionary maneuver” aimed at distracting the public from “the real threats of interference targeting Romania.”

Last year, French authorities charged Durov with facilitating the distribution of child sexual exploitation material and drug trafficking due to alleged moderation failures on Telegram. He was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in August before being released on €5 million ($5.46 million) bail. Durov, who has denied any wrongdoing, was eventually allowed to leave France in March.

May 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Hep B Vaccines Come With High Risk, Little Benefit — Why Does CDC Recommend Them for Every Newborn?

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 13, 2025

As public concern grows over the large and growing number of shots on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) childhood immunization schedule, several critics are sounding the alarm about one shot in particular — the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine.

Among the 76 vaccine doses on the schedule, the CDC recommends that every infant born in the U.S. get their first dose of the Hep B vaccine on the day they are born. Studies show that more than 90% of infants typically do so.

By age 24 months, most of those infants have received the recommended three doses of the vaccine.

Hepatitis B is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV), which can range from a mild, short-term, acute illness lasting a few weeks to a serious, long-term, chronic infection.

The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids, most often via intimate contact such as sex or sharing intravenous (IV) drug equipment. Being an IV drug user is the most common risk factor for the disease.

Infected pregnant mothers can also pass the disease to their infants, but relatively few do — about 25,000 pregnant women per year, or 0.69%, have Hep B, and about 1,000 of them pass it to their babies, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The CDC says, “almost all children and older adults infected with acute HBV recover completely with no lasting liver damage.”

Women can be tested for the disease to see if their babies would benefit from vaccination, but that’s not what the CDC recommends.

Instead, today the Hep B vaccine is required for children to attend either childcare, school, or both, in every state except Alabama.

School-age children don’t fit the profile of those at risk for contracting Hepatitis B. Also, the CDC has no evidence that Hepatitis B has ever been transmitted in a school setting, according to a records search posted on Substack by attorney Aaron Siri, who made the request.

Siri argues the Hep B mandate is about profit, not about protecting children from a contagious disease.

“The Hepatitis B vaccine is a case study in agency capture,” Siri wrote. All children would not be required to take the shot, he said “if pharma didn’t stand to earn billions through a wider mandate of this product.”

The Hep B vaccine market, valued at more than $8 billion in 2023, is projected to grow to over $13 billion by 2032, with the U.S. making up the largest market for the vaccine, Fortune Business Insights reported.

Why did the Hep B vaccine get added to the childhood schedule?

In a Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics article, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland questioned the constitutionality of mandating the Hep B vaccine for children to access education, especially given that CDC data show that transmission is unlikely through routine contact among children.

She said the CDC’s position on mass vaccination for children changed after the pharmaceutical companies got legal protection from liability.

When the CDC vaccine advisory committee made its first Hep B vaccine recommendation in 1982, the agency observed that the U.S. was a place of “low HBV prevalence.” CDC officials recommended the shot only for people at higher risk, including healthcare workers, people likely to be in sexual or “needle stick” contact with an infected person and infants born to mothers infected with the virus.

In 1988, the committee called for all pregnant mothers to be screened to determine if vaccination would be necessary. At that time, it was estimated that 16,500 mothers per year were infected and that without vaccination, an estimated 3,500 infants would become chronic carriers.

Later that year, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), created by the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, was established. The law protects vaccine makers from liability for injuries related to vaccines on the CDC’s childhood schedule, and the VICP is meant to provide an alternative means of compensating people who suffer “accidental injury or death” from taking those vaccines.

By 1991, the CDC had begun describing HBV risks differently, stating that the consequences of infection were “major health problems” in the U.S. — even though rates had not changed and the number of children infected with HBV was just a few hundred.

The CDC’s advisory committee concluded that because it was challenging to vaccinate those at risk for HBV, mass immunization against the virus was “the most effective means of preventing HBV infection and its consequences.”

The committee recommended all infants be vaccinated, regardless of their mothers’ hepatitis B status, and the Hep B vaccine was added to the childhood immunization schedule.

Dangers of the Hep B vaccine

Then and now, there are two Hep B vaccines licensed for infants at birth: Merck’s Recombivax HB and GSK’s Engerix-B. Both are made using a genetic engineering technology that was new when the vaccines were developed.

The clinical trials for both brands included only a small number of children, and researchers followed up on safety monitoring with infants for only four or five days in the different trials.

No medium or long-term studies were done, no comparisons were made between vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects, and the vaccines were administered only to healthy babies.

According to the Recombivax HB label, during clinical trials, 434 doses of the drug were administered to 147 healthy infants and children up to age 10, who were each monitored for five days after each dose. During those five days, 10% of infants experienced systemic reactions, including “irritability, fever (≥101°F oral equivalent), diarrhea, fatigue/weakness, diminished appetite, and rhinitis.”

Among the much larger group of 1,252 healthy adults, reactions were wide-ranging and sometimes serious. They included injection site issues and fevers, upper respiratory infections, influenza, body pain, insomnia and hypotension.

The Engerix-B package insert doesn’t specify how many babies were included in its clinical trials. However, it does indicate the trial subjects were monitored for only four days. The insert lists similar adverse events to those of Recombivax HB.

Post-marketing studies, which collect voluntary reports of adverse effects registered in places like the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or with the vaccine makers, showed many more serious side effects reported for both versions of the Hep B vaccine.

Examples include immune system disorders like systemic lupus erythematosus, thrombocytopenia, Guillain-barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, febrile seizure, Bell’s Palsy, herpes zoster, encephalitis, and many more.

Premature infants who take either Hep B vaccine have also experienced sleep apnea, which the labels warn about.

The inserts indicate it is impossible to determine whether the vaccine caused any of the reported events. Heritage Foundation Policy Analyst Catherine Pakaluk, Ph.D., criticized this approach to identifying adverse effects.

She wrote:

“To the extent that clinical trial data are insufficient to draw robust safety conclusions, patients are effectively used as test subjects post-licensure, but without knowledge that they are part of the test and without hope that their own adverse experiences will be scientifically useful as they would be in the case of a controlled trial. Voluntary adverse event data are suitable for identifying safety signals, but not for drawing conclusions about real risks.

The available data comes mostly from clinical trials that had small sample sizes, no control groups, and only a few days of follow-up, she added. The only other data source is post-licensure data, “which suffer from a lack of statistical usefulness.”

Peer-reviewed research also links the Engerix B vaccine to CNS inflammatory demyelination — a group of diseases in which the immune system attacks and damages the myelin sheath that protects the brain and spinal cord — namely multiple sclerosis in children.

Studies of children in the U.S. also linked the Hep B vaccine to arthritis, acute ear infections and sore throats. And a 2008 study associated Hep B vaccination of male newborns with autism diagnoses at three times the normal rate.

In a recent presentation about the Hep B vaccine, CHD science team member Heather Ray highlighted other safety concerns. For example, Ray noted that vaccine dosage is the same for newborn infants as it is for adults. Vaccine dosage doesn’t vary for a 7-pound infant or a 210-pound linebacker, she said.

The dose exposes babies to both the genetically engineered antigen and the aluminum adjuvant.

“Aluminum is a heavy metal that’s a proven neurotoxin and can cross the blood-brain barrier,” Ray said. “It has scientifically been shown to cause autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases and other horrendous neurological diseases and chronic illnesses.”

Infants’ organ membrane barriers are more permeable than those of adults, making them more susceptible to aluminum.

Until 2001, the Hep B vaccines also contained 25 micrograms of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal.

Since the VAERS was established in 1990, there have been 18,950 adverse events reported in children under age 2 following Hep B vaccination, and 31,082 reports in children under age 17.

VAERS has been estimated to contain approximately 1% of adverse events, according to David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Critics say Hep B vaccine poses many risks and no benefits for most babies

In terms of efficacy, the Hep B vaccine package inserts say the vaccine has been shown to produce antibodies to hepatitis B, and “appears to have protected infants whose mothers tested positive for hepatitis B antigens.”

Pakaluk wrote, “Therefore, we can conclude that the vaccine provides a robust antibody response to a disease to which they are not regularly exposed, and how long that antibody response lasts is unknown. In other words, for children not exposed to hepatitis B, there is no known benefit.”

Substack writer J.B. Handley, who has called for the elimination of the vaccine from the childhood schedule, wrote, “It’s a nearly useless vaccine, unless you are in the tiny minority of babies who have a mother with Hepatitis B.”

The Informed Consent Action Network, in 2020, filed a petition with the FDA demanding that the licensure of the Hep B vaccines be revoked or suspended until their safety was determined in a properly designed clinical trial.

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said,

“The CDC immunization schedule was simply not written for most people. The childhood Hep B recommendation is a prominent example. It is a pathogen that is primarily transmitted between humans through dirty needles and unprotected sex.

“In rare circumstances, it may be transmitted between people who live together — if one of them has an active infection — by things like shaving razors. Most children have zero risk factors and zero exposure. Most children should not be vaccinated against hepatitis B.”

Watch Heather Ray’s Hep B presentation here.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

EU queen Ursula preached transparency – then did backdoor deals with Big Pharma

By Rachel Marsden | RT | May 16, 2025

Well, this is awkward. How many times has Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president and unelected de facto ruler of the EU, delivered sermons about transparency like she’s the high priestess of some kind of parallel Brussels Vatican? And now the EU’s own top court has called her out in a ruling for neglecting to practice what she preaches.

Back in 2023, during her State of the European Union address, doing her finest impression of someone elected by the actual public, von der Leyen declared the need to douse any and all sketchiness in sunlight in order to “not allow any autocracy’s Trojan horses to attack our democracies from within.”

“Transparency should characterize the work of all the members of the Commission and of their cabinets,” she said as far back as 2019. “I have asked commissioners…to engage more and be more transparent,” she proclaimed in a speech to EU parliamentarians last year. Transparency and accountability also figured prominently in her bid for reappointment by the EU’s ruling elites last year.

Great news! She can now finally embark on this noble mission, and begin her journey with little more than a simple glance in the mirror. Because the European Court of Justice – the body that rules on whether EU institutions have actually crossed into illegality, not just occupying their usual territory of elite-grade idiocy – has just decided that Queen Ursula’s Commission can’t just wave away a pile of her own Covid-era text messages by going, “Whoops! They disappeared. Oh well, what do you do?” Which is basically what the Commission’s response was to the New York Times when it asked to see those messages.

And how did the Times know that these texts even existed? Because Ursula literally told them, bragging in an interview about how she scored so many vaxxes because she’s super tight with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. All this was for a piece spotlighting her Covid efforts, published in April 2021: “How Europe sealed a Pfizer vaccine deal with texts and calls.”

The article featured the same kind of glamour photography reminiscent of the good ol’ days when Ursula was Germany’s defense minister from 2013 to 2019, under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, and doing photo shoots in front of military hardware while accusations swirled that she had bungled the budget with shady defense contracts, even as the Bundeswehr was stuck using brooms for guns during a NATO exercise, as the Atlantic Council reported in 2015.

“For a month, Ms von der Leyen had been exchanging texts and calls with Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer… Pfizer might have more doses it could offer the bloc – many more,” the NYT piece reads, referring to the “personal diplomacy” that “played a big role in a deal” for 1.8 billion Pfizer anti-Covid doses.

So the Times hears about these text messages and was like, “Oh, cool. Let’s see!”

Suddenly Queen Ursula became a lot less chatty. So the Times took the matter to the EU’s own top court to get the disclosure. And now this court has said, in legal terms, that Ursula can’t just ghost the Times – and the public by extension – without giving a real reason. That there has to be a “plausible explanation to justify the non possession” of the texts. And also, the court says that “the Commission has failed to explain in a plausible manner” why it thought that these messages were so trivial that they could be vaporized like they were just her Eurovision contest text voting and not a matter of public record which, by definition, should be maintained.

Out of these little chats came €71 billion in Covid jab contracts with Big Pharma’s Pfizer and AstraZeneca – 11 of them to be precise, totaling 4.6 billion doses, paid for with cash taken straight from EU taxpayers. Enough for ten doses for every EU citizen.

Turns out that freewheeling it may have resulted in some consequences that could have been avoided had a diverse group of minds been engaged on the issue, as protocol normally dictates, and not just Ursula’s. It’s not like there hasn’t been a costly fallout from all this. A big chunk of the EU, including Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, is shouting about surplus doses for which they’re on the hook, urging Brussels to renegotiate the contractual terms with Big Pharma. Germany alone has reportedly trashed 200 million of them. Tricky to negotiate, though, when no one’s even sure what the terms were, as the second-highest European court pointed out last year. “The Commission did not give the public sufficiently wide access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines… The Commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings,” it ruled.

The details of these contracts – how they were made, what they say, and how anyone’s supposed to back out of them if citizens politely decline to max out their ten-jab punch card – remain a mystery.

Back in 2024, Brussels more or less shrugged and suggested that it could really only be as transparent as the courts forced it to be. So hey, what can you do? “In general, the Commission grants the widest possible public access to documents, in line with the principles of openness and transparency,” the EU said, underscoring that the lower court ruling “confirmed that the Commission was entitled to provide only partial access.”

Well, good news, guys! Your very own top court just ruled that you can now be a lot more transparent! So go crazy. Be the change that you keep saying you want to be in the world. Nothing is holding you back now. If transparency were a vaccine, this court just gave Ursula a booster. So we’ll see if it takes. I won’t hold my breath.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

NATO hit by corruption scandal

RT | May 16, 2025

Police have conducted arrests and searches in several countries as part of a corruption investigation involving current and former employees of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

The raids, coordinated by Eurojust – the EU’s criminal justice agency – took place in Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and the US. The alliance told Luxembourg Times on Wednesday that NSPA’s main headquarters in the Grand Duchy had initiated the probe.

“NATO – including the NSPA – is working closely with law enforcement to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” spokeswoman Allison Hart said. “We are actively strengthening our ability to mitigate risks and root out misconduct,” she added.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters in Ankara on Thursday that the military bloc was working with the authorities. “We want to get to the root of this,” Rutte said.

The public prosecutor’s office in Luxembourg said that documents were seized pertaining to suspicions that NSPA staffers had “used their positions to enrich themselves.”

Two people were arrested in Belgium, and three in the Netherlands, officials said. Belgian prosecutors stated that the investigation centers around “possible irregularities in awarding contracts to defence contractors for the purchase of military equipment for NATO such as ammunition and drones.” The probe also looks at possible sharing of confidential information by NSPA employees with defense companies and money laundering.

The Dutch authorities said they arrested a former official with the Dutch Defense Ministry at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on Monday. The former civil servant is suspected of taking bribes in 2023 regarding the awarding of defense contracts.

The investigation takes place as NATO members are looking for ways to boost their own defense and produce more weapons to be delivered to Ukraine. In March, the European Commission unveiled a plan to raise €800 billion ($896 billion) to “rearm” the EU.

May 15, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | | 1 Comment

US court hits Israeli spyware firm NSO with $167m fine over Pegasus abuses

MEMO | May 14, 2025

A federal jury in California has ordered Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group to pay Meta $167 million in punitive damages, marking the first time a court has imposed financial liability on a spyware vendor for abuses linked to its software.

The ruling sends a strong signal that private firms profiting from invasive surveillance technology will not be shielded by their association with government clients. After a single day of deliberation, jurors found that NSO had acted with “malice, oppression or fraud” in deploying its Pegasus spyware against 1,400 WhatsApp users.

Pegasus, which grants near-total access to a target’s device, including microphones, cameras and encrypted messages, was used not against criminals, but journalists, human rights defenders and political dissidents. Meta, which owns WhatsApp, described the hacking as “despicable” and a clear violation of privacy rights.

NSO has long claimed that its spyware is sold only to vetted state clients for national security purposes. However, investigations have shown Pegasus being deployed to facilitate transnational repression by authoritarian regimes.

The previous US administration blacklisted NSO over its role in such abuses, making it the first company added to the US entity list for enabling state surveillance. The jury’s decision is expected to add pressure on Washington to further regulate the commercial spyware sector.

While the financial penalty may prove difficult to collect, the judgement itself sets a precedent: spyware firms can be held directly accountable in US courts, regardless of the state affiliations of their customers.

In doing so, the case reframes digital privacy not merely as a user expectation, but as a civil right  and signals that the impunity long enjoyed by private surveillance actors is coming to an end.

May 14, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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